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Some vineyards are employing computerized robotics to hasten the business of harvesting. Napa Valley wineries like Conn Creek, Hall Wines, and Opus One are among the pioneers using the new technology called an “optical grape sorter,” a ten-foot long contraption used to separate good grapes from bad ones.

Used along with a gentle-crush destemmer, these high-tech sorters can do the work of a dozen-member crew at a fraction of the time. Some claim the optical sorter is the wine industry’s cotton-gin equivalent, streamlining laborious grape harvesting and processing.

France-based viticulture product manufacturer, Bucher Vaslin, makes one of two popular sorter brands. (The other is Pellenc.) The firm’s Delta R2 Vistalys, the second of its series, first appeared in the U.S. in 2009. Costing between $150,000 and $200,000 each, optical sorters are increasingly looked on as investments for larger or luxury-tier winemakers who are looking to boost efficiency.

Art is going online, not just through virtual auctions, but also through online museum portals. It begs the question: If major museums around the world are digitizing their collections, should a private collector do likewise? What are the potential costs and benefits of doing so?

To answer such questions, first a little history. The fear of creating replicas of art, as explained in Walter Benjamin’s 1935 essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” is that copies sap the aura and mystery around the original.

That view has proven remarkably resilient over time. Until recently, the world’s best museums held high-quality digital images close to their chest, reinforcing the notion that viewing originals on a wall is far superior to looking at them on a computer screen. The museum director’s concern, of course, was that by giving images away for free online, he or she would cannibalize attendance at their museum.

Are there any truths universal to all collectors, no matter what they collect?

I’ve long pondered that issue, which is why Penta recently convened a panel of world-class collectors for a night of white wine and gab at the Bonhams auction house on Madison Avenue in New York. Our goal: have three wildly different collectors—in watches, wine, and fine-art photography—tell their personal stories about how they built their collections and, in the process, determine if there were any threads that stitched through all their stories.

There were several, but one theme in particular stuck with me. It is, of course, well known that hot passion is at the core of all great collections and collectors. The revelation was how the seeds of that passion are sewn in the first half of the collector’s life.

Here is a list of five philanthropic organizations successfully making inroads in Africa –and why.But, before we start, be aware that“effective” philanthropy is usually defined as having achieved “results.” That’s fine, but “effective” is not the same thing as “worthy.” If you’re going to use hard evidence of results as your only yardstick for measuring philanthropic success, charities with more intangible but nevertheless still important goals will probably not make the cut.

The African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF) operates, for example, in seven different African nations; its multi-pronged approach tackles everything from maternal health to medical research. The charity is pursuing worthy causes, in other words, but given its vast reach and scope, results are hard to measure. So don’t overlook some of the many “worthy” charities out there that don’t have the cold metrics to document all their results.

That caveat aside, here are five effective Africa-focused charities that smartly get the job done. They’ve been hand-picked by Page Snow, the chief philanthropic officer of Foundation Source, a Connecticut-based philanthropic advisor and partner to 1,110 private foundations across the country. (To learn more about Foundation Source, check out Penta’s article, “Help for Philanthropists.”)

Cultivating a family legacy is not that different from tending a garden: land with poor prospects, at first glance, has to be coaxed over time –patiently and carefully–until it has a fertile life of its own. Case in point: The Morris family of Pennsylvania, which nursed its garden into an arboretum, an estate that lives on even after the family mansion, the iron-manufacturing company that supplied its fortune, and the line of direct descendants have all disappeared.

It’s a private park well worth a visit. The Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania meanders over 175 acres in northwestern Chestnut Hill, a quaint and leafy Philadelphia neighborhood of cobblestone streets and boutique shops. In 1887, John and Lydia Morris, brother and sister heirs of the I.P. Morris firm, bought the land. It seemed an unlikely spot for their botanical ambitions, an infertile lot with poor, quick-draining soil.

Out of this stark landscape, the Morrises not only fashioned the quirky Compton mansion, but pioneered a new kind of ornamental garden: Inspired by their extensive travels in Europe and Asia, John and Lydia created English park-style grounds infused with both native and exotic flora, overseen by a gardener and landscape architect imported from Japan.

A recent survey of 901 accredited investors as conducted by iCrowd, a social media site for entrepreneurs, found 71% of accredited investors, which roughly means anyone with more than $1 million to invest, did not even know they were accredited.

That is a deeply relevant statistic. In July, the SEC finalized rules which allow hedge funds, and other private securities issuers, to advertise to a seemingly ambiguous group called “accredited investors.” That means hedge fund managers can peddle their wares to any individual whose net worth exceeds $1 million or collects an annual income north of $200,000. Expect those who didn’t know they were players to get barraged by “educating” ads when they are finally allowed to run September 23.

The accredited investor threshold bar is set fairly high so the general (and naive) public is shielded from spooky Wall Street types. The SEC says only 7 percent of U.S. households, or roughly 8 million homes, meet these requirements. Yet some Democrats are decrying the change, arguing that solicitation will make it easier for funds to perpetrate fraud upon a wider audience who, just because they have money, are not necessarily much more sophisticated. (For an amusing take on hedge funds allowed to advertise, see Barron’s Randall Forsyth column, “Mad Men Meet Their Match”)

The family office of Diana “Dini” Cecil Pickering, the 55 year-old great-granddaughter of George Vanderbilt, doesn’t focus on overseeing the family’s investment portfolio, but instead works at educating current and future owners of the Biltmore Estate, the largest private home in the United States, about their legacy and responsibilities.

Those responsibilities are considerable. Pickering’s great-grandfather built the Biltmore Estate, one of America’s grandest homes, a stunning 250-room, 8,000 acre Gilded Age work of art in Asheville, N.C.. It’s the legacy in that stone manse that Dini Pickering and her relatives are trying to preserve and pass on, while her brother, William “Bill” Amherst Vanderbilt Cecil Jr., oversees operations and physical preservation as CEO of the Biltmore Estate.

To that end, Pickering just completed her 20th biannual family meeting, marking her family office’s 10th anniversary. It’s taken a full decade, Pickering says, to work out the family office’s mission and goals, but finally it’s come together. She, her brother, their spouses and children have policies and plans worked out, as the fifth generation, comprising her two children, two nephews and a niece, begin to take up the challenge of operating the Biltmore Estate.

“We’ve gone at a consistent rate, but not at a speedy rate,” Pickering says. “It doesn’t happen overnight, and since we only meet twice a year, it’s been a process, but I feel very proud about where we’ve come from and what we’ve been able to accomplish.”

The rest of us can only hope they are successful. The Biltmore Estate is a national treasure. The lavish mansion was designed in the style of a Renaissance French Chateau by Richard Morris Hunt; the grounds were landscaped by Frederick Law Olmsted. The home itself shelters priceless works, including 16th century Flemish tapestries, rare books, antique furniture, and paintings. It has 43 bathrooms, 65 fireplaces, three kitchens, and a 70,000 gallon indoor pool with a vaulted tiled ceiling by Rafael Guastavino. All this requires 1,800 employees, who welcome approximately 1 million visitors a year, each of whom pays about $60 to enter the estate. In total, the Biltmore generates $140 million in annual revenue, but about 90 cents of every dollar in fees gets reinvested in operations.

The late Frederick Weisman was a businessman, philanthropist, and art collector extraordinaire. A Minnesota native born to Russian refugees, Weisman made a fortune in canned foods and car dealerships, and spent much of it on modern and contemporary art. He nailed it to every wall, and stuffed in into every nook, cranny, and even bathroom of his sprawling Mediterranean revival mansion, in an upscale Los Angeles enclave called Holmby Hills. When he ran out of space, he suspended large canvases from the ceiling.

Weisman died in 1994, and the house and collection are owned today by the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, run by his second wife, Billie. A visit to the property, which is little known even among Angelenos, offers intimate encounters with the greatest names in 20th century art, and a colorful plunge into the mind of a bold and exuberant collector. Tours are available by appointment – free of charge – on weekday afternoons.

Weisman’s belief in art was primal. His taste was expansive, and his wallet, apparently more so. He bought modern masters including Picasso and Cezanne; Abstract Expressionists; Pop and Op artists; California up-and-comers; and sculptors of every persuasion. He loved arranging and rearranging his collection, sometimes awakening in the middle of the night to move works around the house. “He felt art was an international language that transcended philosophical and language barriers,” Billie Milam Weisman says. “He saw in art a spiritual dimension.”

Step through the front door of the Weismans’ home, and you’re suddenly thrust into a kaleidoscopic world of light, color, texture, and shape. Look to the left, and White Lid, a huge 12-sided fiberglass disc by the southern California artist Ronald Davis, practically leaps off the music-room ceiling. To the right, in an alcove near the stairs, stands Duane Hanson’s hyper-realist sculpture Florida Shopper, all decked out for her trip to the local Winn-Dixie.

When my son Danny and I headed off for a five-day, food-themed vacation in Paris, we each had something in mind. Danny is a 22-year-old aspiring chef and wanted to scope out the latest happenings on the French culinary scene. I am a middle-aged food rube and hoped to refine my palette beyond turkey burgers and scrambled eggs. At the Pierre Gagnaire restaurant, a short walk from the Arc de Triomph, we both found what we were looking for, and then some.

Chef Pierre Gagnaire is a hero to the world’s most adventurous eaters. He mixes and matches flavors, textures and colors from various cooking traditions to create entirely original dishes. Each meal consists of extraordinary variety—mine came in 19 separate dishes—and Gagnaire constantly refreshes the menu, surprising even his regulars. These experiments in “fusion” cuisine have earned him three stars from Michelin and serious admiration from other top chefs. As a trusted Parisian source of Penta put it, the restaurant is “definitely the most fascinating gastronomic experience at the moment in Paris.”

This wasn’t hash browns at my New York diner. It was potatoes from Noirmoutier, an island off France’s Atlantic coast whose soil is rich in sea salt. Fertilized with seaweed, they are considered the best, most expensive potatoes known to man—the Rolls Royce of Potatoes. Paired with white asparagus, potatoes from Noirmoutier arrived at the table as one of our many appetizers, along with such imponderables as “fennel water flavored with tarragon” and “Aspic of anglerfish spiced with tandoori.”

At one point early on, our highly attentive waiter swooped in with a basket of bread. As you might suspect, it was not just any bread. It was insanely good and Danny, who had been working at an excellent bakery in upstate New York, Mrs. London’s of Saratoga Springs, knew exactly why. The baguettes, for instance, were made with “a darker wheat flower than you usually see in baguettes,” he told me. The “delicate, almost nutty” flavor of the flour permeated the bread. To Danny’s clear satisfaction as a baker, the bread, with its accompanying French butter, was “treated as its own course rather than a mere afterthought.”

When packing bags for Britain, I follow in the footsteps of Geoffrey Chaucer’s pilgrims. The Canterbury Tales opens, with good reason, “Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote….” The pilgrims knew, after a gray British winter, that April is a light-filled canvas of budding trees, yellow daffodils, and rolling white clouds. The air is crisp and butter-bright; the renewing showers come and go quickly. I think T.S. Eliot got it entirely wrong, weather­-wise, when he claimed in The Waste Land that “April is the cruelest month.”

We lived in London for 17 years – our daughter was born there – so landing on British soil always feels like a homecoming of sorts. During those ex-pat years we always rented a cottage, in a different part of the country, during that unique British stillness that falls between Christmas and New Year. Historic cottages are easily had through the National Trust and English Heritage.

But one corner of Britain we never explored during our posting in London, much to our regret, was the Lake District of Cumbria. It’s home to Britain’s highest peaks and deepest lakes, and inspired early 19th century writers like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, collectively known as the Lake Poets.

About Penta

Written with Barron’s wit and often contrarian perspective, Penta provides the affluent with advice on how to navigate the world of wealth management, how to make savvy acquisitions ranging from vintage watches to second homes, and how to smartly manage family dynamics.

Richard C. Morais, Penta’s editor, was Forbes magazine’s longest serving foreign correspondent, has won multiple Business Journalist Of The Year Awards, and is the author of two novels: The Hundred-Foot Journey and Buddhaland, Brooklyn. Robert Milburn is Penta’s reporter, both online and for the quarterly magazine. He reviews everything from family office regulations to obscure jazz recordings.